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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Don't worry finding a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a major brand, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not alone in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. However, we're all losing a part of the experience here.